Earlier this year the TARO Standards Subcommittee shared with you that we have been tasked with assessing the level of adoption of the TARO Best Practice Guidelines, among other things. You can check out the Standards wiki page to learn about what our group has been doing this past year.

This message is to ask you to share your thoughts with us. Let us know what you think of the TARO Best Practice Guidelines, both what you like and what you don’t like. We want to know if you are using the best practice guidelines document, and if you are not, to learn why.

TARO would like your participation in forming the next TARO Steering Committee. To that end we ask for nominations as described in the TARO Bridge Governance plan: “Steering Committee members may be nominated until two weeks before an election. Self­-nomination is permitted. Candidates for the Steering Committee will provide brief statements detailing their reasons for running and provide a summary of their qualifications to the Nominating Committee. These statements will be distributed electronically to TARO members at least one week prior to the elections. For the formal vote in October, each member institution may submit one vote (ballot).”

Thank you all who participated in the Index Terms survey we sent out in May. We are writing to share with you the results of the survey and to let you know that the TARO Steering Committee will further investigate/peruse the Metadata Hopper software option based on feedback received from survey. See below for survey results.

Question 1:Is your repository able to check all Index Terms (Names, Subjects, Document Types, and Titles) in the <controlaccess> section in your EAD files before uploading to TARO to verify that the terms match the authorized version of the term and that the encodinganalog and source attribute values are assigned correctly?

The majority of responders indicated that they do check all their terms or at least try to verify them. Some are not able to check them and others are not sure whether this is done before upload to TARO.

Question 2: Do you believe your repository has the necessary resources (staff time and expertise) to retrospectively review your EAD files’ <controlaccess> terms and edit them as needed to use the authorized vocabulary terms if TARO provided a report of what terms need to be updated?

Several people indicated that they believe their institution has the resources or can plan for the next fiscal year to embark on a project to do a data clean-up project. The comments indicate that people could do a cleanup project (after TARO provided a report) as long as there was ample time (no tight deadlines); responders asking for flexibility.

Question 3: In addition to controlled lists of local terms would it cause practical/logistical problems for your institution if TARO decided to require that EAD files use specific controlled vocabularies, such as Library of Congress Name Authority File and Subject Headings, and Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus, for <controlaccess> terms going forward?

Most people replied that they do not foresee any problems if TARO required a controlled vocabulary but asked for the flexibility of still being able to use some local terms that follow controlled vocabulary conventions (e.g. follow LCNAF conventions to create an entry). Again people ask for flexibility and/or training (specifically referring to AAT).

Question 4: Would your repository be willing to have its TARO finding aids sorted into broad TARO subject categories to enhance user experience in browsing? For an example, see the Chicago Collections site (http://explore.chicagocollections.org/)

Good news! Nearly everyone who responded said their institution would be willing to have broad subject terms applied to their finding aids. There was one blank response and one person said that this would be okay as long as there was no additional work incurred on their staff.

Question 5:Do you have additional comments or questions?

Most people had no comments. Five comments were submitted (mainly from Steering Committee members).

Best,

TARO Steering Committee

]]>https://blogs.lib.utexas.edu/taro/2017/07/14/taro-index-terms-survey-results/feed/0TARO conversion to schema formatted EAD file complete!https://blogs.lib.utexas.edu/taro/2017/07/05/taro-conversion-to-schema-formatted-ead-file-complete/
https://blogs.lib.utexas.edu/taro/2017/07/05/taro-conversion-to-schema-formatted-ead-file-complete/#commentsWed, 05 Jul 2017 14:07:26 +0000http://blogs.lib.utexas.edu/taro/?p=417Exciting news! All current TARO repositories have successfully gone through conversion of their files to schema format, and are now able to submit only schema compliant files.

Thank you to everyone for your work on this effort!

Extra special thanks to Minnie Rangel at UT Libraries for helping us through with her wonderful processing scripts, helpful error reports, and friendly communications.

TARO is better positioned now to move forward with upgrades once we submit our implementation grant request and are funded. We are currently settling some outstanding questions of governance and sustainability, and then plan to submit our implementation grant request in Summer 2018.

We need your input to plan our path forward in relation to the Index Terms (also known as <controlaccess> terms) such as personal and corporate names, subject terms, and genre terms used in finding aids submitted to TARO.

As you may know, TARO has not in the past strictly required use of a particular controlled vocabulary, and repositories have used what fit their collections. This has resulted in a rather wide variety of headings in TARO, raising concerns for the user’s experience in trying to browse TARO by index terms. Imagine for example, browsing across all name, subject, or format headings in TARO – there would be similar headings with minor differences in them, some finding aids with many headings and some with few, some with ending punctuation and others with none, some with local headings, some with only authorized headings.

We are therefore exploring whether it makes sense to either:

1.) Engage in TARO-wide index term clean up work (with repository participation / approval) and require use of only specific vocabularies going forward or

2.) Leave repositories to use vocabularies as they wish, and implement software (Metadata Hopper) to apply broad subject categories for browsing purposes. A program using this software is the [explore.chicagocollections.org]Chicago Collections.

Many repositories will have varied answers to these questions, please just answer as best you can. The information will not be publicized; it will only be used to get an honest view for planning purposes.

Amy Bowman and I are excited to offer a TARO workshop May 24, 2017,
at the Society of Southwest Archivists annual meeting,
located this year in beautiful Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Watch for registration through the Society of Southwest Archivists, opening soon.

The workshop has a max size of 15 participants, so sign up early if you are interested.
If there is a wait list, we can discuss a Winter offering in a Texas location.

This workshop will teach the hands-on basic skills needed to participate in TARO, including basic XML familiarity and editing, EAD familiarity, how to upload files to TARO, and troubleshooting. The full day is recommended for those with little or no TARO, EAD, or XML experience. The half-day (afternoon only) is recommended as a refresher for those who might feel rusty and/or have work environment changes which have changed their approach to TARO (such as using collection management software now instead of hand-encoding XML). The workshop is open to anyone but is focused on TARO guidelines and workflows.

This is not an intensive EAD course, or an intensive XML class, but will show the basics to get you started and share resources to help you once you return to your workplace.

_____________________________________________Would you like a detailed class specifically on EAD/XML?
Amigos is offering such a class live-online (four 2-hr sessions), in March 2017.
Get the details here: http://www.amigos.org/node/3587

As we move into the next phase of the TARO infrastructure update, Amanda Focke and I wanted to send out an update about our NEH planning grant and share the next steps for the TARO Steering Committee.

The final version of our NEH planning grant may be reviewed here. Our deepest thanks go out to all of you who helped make this grant happen with your participation on TARO committees this year—we accomplished a whole lot during the grant term! Amanda and I were especially pleased that we were able to include a Memorandum of Understanding with UT Libraries in the final report. A special thanks goes out to Aaron Choate from UT Libraries for writing the MOU and steering it through UT Libraries’ administration. Note that the MOU covers just the interim grant phase, it is not a final determination of TARO’s institutional home. However, this MOU does provides us with a solid home base from which to apply for implementation funds.

TARO will now head into a new phase with its the Steering Committee, which will be a smaller group over the coming months: Amanda Focke will serve as Chair, Sandra Yates will serve as Vice-Chair, Carol Mead will serve as Secretary, and Carla Alvarez, Ann Hodges, and Kelly Kerbow-Hudson will be our At-Large Reps. In addition, Aaron Choate will become much more involved with the TARO Steering Committee, acting as the UT Libraries representative on the committee. Steering Committee members will no longer chair subcommittees.

We hope that everyone who’d like to be involved the TARO implementation project will continue to do so through TARO subcommittees; we expect that subcommittee work will begin ramping up again in the New Year after the new Steering Committee has had a chance to meet.

There’s a lot to look forward to with TARO over the next year, including the continuation and conclusion of the schema conversion project, planning for submission of the implementation grant, continued discussions regarding TARO’s institutional home, and ongoing updates to TARO spaces like the blog and wiki. In addition, Amanda and I are also happy to announce that we’ll be giving a TARO training workshop at SSA in Fayetteville in May 2017.

1.) The TARO Steering Committee is wrapping up its NEH Planning Grant, and would like to take steps to formalize its committee structure while working toward writing an implementation funding grant. Please see the TARO Bridge Governance Planonline here. Comments are welcome and will be accepted through September 30, 2016. Please submit comments to the TARO list or to the current TARO co-chairs, Amy Bowman (a.bowman@austin.utexas.edu) and Amanda Focke (afocke@rice.edu).
2.)TARO would like your participation in forming the next TARO Steering Committee. To that end we ask for nominations as described in the Bridge Governance plan: “Steering Committee members may be nominated until two weeks before an election. Self­-nomination is permitted. Candidates for the Steering Committee will provide brief statements detailing their reasons for running and provide a summary of their qualifications to the Nominating Committee. These statements will be distributed electronically to TARO members at least one week prior to the elections. For the formal vote in October, each member institution may submit one vote (ballot).” Nominations accepted (by this online form) until October 7, 2016,the slate will then be distributed,with online voting opening Friday Oct 21 ending Friday Oct. 28, 2016 (also by an online form).

Thanks so much for offering any feedback on the governance plan and for nominating candidates for the Steering Committee,TARO co-chairs, Amanda Focke (afocke@rice.edu) and Amy Bowman (a.bowman@austin.utexas..edu)

We are wrapping up schema conversion for repositories who already create schema-compliant EAD using ArchivesSpace and Archon (known as “Group A”).
Directions for those repositories are online at TARO Today blog (using Archon, and using ArchivesSpace).

All of our “Group A” repositories (those using software that exports XML such as Archon, ArchivistsToolkit, or ArchivesSpace) have had their existing files converted to schema format. Almost all of them have corrected the very minor errors which popped up.
These repositories are refining their workflows for submitting schema compliant & TARO friendly files now.
ArchivesSpace users are up and running, using the ArchivesSpace guidelines on the TARO Today blog.We are working on similar how-to info for Archon, ArchivistsToolkit, CuadraStar users, which will then also be published and announced.
(Note: It was discovered that CuadraStar exports dtd-XML, not schema, so they will have a slightly different process.)
All will be keeping in mind the new TARO Standards / Best Practices Guidelines.

Our “Group B” repositories of hand-encoders are starting to be converted now.
These folks using XML editors such as Oxygen and XMetal, or other tools such as Notepad ++, will be making use of the new TARO Standards / Best Practices Guidelines (which also include XML templates, very handy for hand-encoders).